Both text messaging and instant messaging are forms of personal communication that have grown in popularity and use over the last decade.
In this respect, “text messaging” refers to the sending and receiving of text messages (sometimes abbreviated as “SMSes”) via wireless telecommunication systems using a Short Message Service (sometimes abbreviated as SMS). The sending and receiving of such text messages is well known and commonly performed using mobile client devices, such as smart phones or PDAs. Common applications of SMS include person-to-person messaging. However, SMSes also are now used to interact with automated systems, such as ordering products and services for mobile client devices or participating in contests using mobile client devices such as, for example, voting for contestants in American Idol competitions.
In contrast to text messaging, “instant messaging” (sometimes abbreviated as “IM”) is a form of “real-time” communication between two or more people that is based on the transmission of text. The text is conveyed over a network such as the Internet. Instant messaging requires an IM client that connects to an IM service. The IM client commonly is installed on a computer such as a laptop or desktop. However, IM clients are now available for use on mobile client devices. Because IM is considered “real-time,” communications back and forth between users of IM clients sometimes is deemed a “conversation,” just as if the people were speaking directly to one another. The present invention has applicability both in text messaging as well as in instant messaging and, except where context clearly implies otherwise, aspects and features of the present invention apply in the context of both (a) SMS systems, methods, applications, and implementations as well as (b) IM systems, methods, applications, and implementations.
More recently, Automatic Speech Recognition (“ASR”) systems, which convert spoken audio into text, have been applied to text messaging and instant messaging. As used herein, the term “speech recognition” refers to the process of converting a speech (audio) signal to a sequence of words or a representation thereof (message strings), by means of an algorithm implemented as a computer program. Speech recognition applications that have emerged over the last few years include voice dialing (e.g., “Call home”), call routing (e.g., “I would like to make a collect call”), simple data entry (e.g., entering a credit card number), preparation of structured documents (e.g., a radiology report), and content-based spoken audio searching (e.g. finding a podcast where particular words were spoken).
As their accuracy has improved, ASR systems have become commonplace in recent years. For example, ASR systems have found wide application in customer service centers of companies. The customer service centers offer middleware and solutions for contact centers. For example, they answer and route calls to decrease costs for airlines, banks, etc. In order to accomplish this, companies such as IBM and Nuance create assets known as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) that answer the calls, then use ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) paired with TTS (Text-To-Speech) software to decode what the caller is saying and communicate back to them.
The application of ASR systems to text messaging and instant messaging has been more recent. Text messaging and instant messaging usually involves the input of a textual message by a sender who presses letters and/or numbers associated with the sender's mobile phone or other mobile device. As recognized for example in the aforementioned, commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/697,074, it can be advantageous to make text messaging and instant messaging far easier for an end user by allowing the user to dictate his or her message rather than requiring the user to type it into his or her phones. In certain circumstances, such as when a user is driving a vehicle, typing a text message may not be possible and/or convenient, and may even be unsafe. On the other hand, text messages can be advantageous to a message receiver as compared to voicemail, as the receiver actually sees the message content in a written format rather than having to rely on an auditory signal.
Now or in the future, users can or will be able to use mobile client devices to interface with many web services via an IM client and/or SMSes. It is believed, for example, that users can or will interact with web services using text messages and/or instant messages such as those provided by Amazon, Facebook, and MySpace. This may be accomplished, for example, using either manually-typed text messages and/or instant messages or such messages that are transcribed from speech using an ASR engine.
Many such web services promote the establishment of user profiles in order to achieve “recommendation engines” and/or ad targeting. Currently, such web services require users to manually setup user profiles, which is usually done upon first establishing user accounts. Although convenient when first establishing the accounts, maintenance of the data in the user profiles, such as user preferences, requires that users manually login to the user accounts and modify and save changes to user preferences, as desired. Unfortunately, many users perform such manual action irregularly or not at all, and consequently user preferences and other data stored in user profiles tends to become outdated over time as user tastes and preferences change. As a result, these web services subsequently experience degradation in their ability to deliver relevant ads, recommendations, and suggestions to users over time, which can decrease their potential revenue per user that is generated from direct or indirect promotions.
Aspects and features of the present invention are believed to further enable and facilitate the use and acceptance of text messaging and instant messaging with mobile client devices. In particular, inventive aspects and features of the invention relate to parsing and/or filtering of message strings (text of instant messages or text messages) that are either manually typed, transcribed from speech, or part of a stream web services query, in order to identify keywords, phrases, or fragments based on which user preferences of user profiles are dynamically updated.
One or more steps of inventive aspects and features of methods of the invention may be performed in client and/or server side processing.